Sarah Paine

But if you play this game, you're surrounding yourself by failing states because you're either busy destabilizing them or ingesting them.

So the curious might ask, are Russia and China unlucky with all the very dysfunctional places that surround them, or are they complicit?

Also, there are no enduring alliances in this world because the neighbors figure it out that the hegemonic power offers nothing but trouble in the long term.

And there's also no counsel on when to stop expanding.

So both Russia and China are known for overextending, overdoing it.

And then that may help explain some of their periodic implosions over their long and bloody histories.

Very high mortality rates.

Before you dismiss this paradigm...

You've seen it operating in real time in Syria and Ukraine.

There are people who do this.

And it also explains why all those ancient ruins are ruins.

This sort of warfare is ruinous.

But anyway, it lies at the basis of many of the great civilizations of Eurasia.

This is how they did things.

All right.

So I'm going to start my story in the mid-19th century, when the Chinese were beset by a whole series of rebellions that just about wrecked them.

And the Russians take advantage of all of this.

Remember the second rule of continental empires, no great power neighbors.

And the Russians repeatedly derail the rise of China by scripting the Chinese to do things that are remarkably detrimental to Chinese interests, but pretty good for Russian interests.

And it takes the Chinese a long time to figure it out.